Notes

Acknowledgements

Certain patterns are provided courtesy of Brian Foster and BMUG.

Compatibility

Menu Bar Pattern has been tested under Systems 6.0.7 through 7.5.

There are a number of software products that do things in the menu bar.  Menu Bar Pattern has been tested with many of them.  The only known problems are cosmetic: if another system extension animates an icon in the menu bar in such a way that the icon changes shape, the background does not always get redrawn in areas vacated by the icon.

If Menu Bar Pattern is running in Transparent mode and another software product changes the desktop pattern or picture, the menu bar may take a couple of seconds to catch up, but it will get there.  The transition time is especially apparent when running Now FunPictures and SuperClock! at the same time.  When FunPictures begins to change the display in the background, SuperClock! will suddenly begin displaying on a background of the actual installed desktop pattern rather than the picture.  In addition, if you switch over to another application before FunPictures completes its transition, the new app’s entire menu bar will display in the desktop pattern momentarily.  Although it may look odd for a few seconds, this behavior is perfectly normal.

Menu Bar Pattern in Transparent mode does not conflict with the animated desktop of Bit Jugglers’ Underware utility, but the visual effect can be disconcerting because the only portions of the menu bar that will be animated are the areas where other software is forcing the menu bar to be continuously updated (e.g. SuperClock! or any flashing menu icon).  So Transparent mode is not really recommended with Underware, but to each his own.

Version History

1.0 — Original release. (Think C 5.0.3)

1.0.1 — Fixed a problem with incorrect colors in the Pattern Editor. (Think C 5.0.3)

1.0.2 — Fixed a problem with the Installed pattern not being saved as such. (Think C 5.0.3)

1.0.3 — a) Changed the traps being patched in order to have a much smaller effect on overall system performance. [However, this causes the Finder, when launching an app, to display the app name on a white menu bar instead of a patterned one.]  b) Corrected a bug in the way patterns are saved after editing [especially noticeable on 8x8 patterns].  c) Truncate patterns that are larger than 32x64. (Think C 5.0.3)

1.0.4 — The trap change of 1.0.3 had some displeasing effects, especially in relation to SuperClock!, so reverted to original scheme. (Think C 5.0.4)

1.1 — a) Conserve memory by disposing patterns that are not visible.  b) Exact colors used in Pattern Editor.  c) Color Picker used in Pattern Editor.  (Think C 5.0.4)

1.2 — Transparent mode added.  (Think C 6.0.1)

1.2.1 — a) Some new keystrokes added.  b) Menu bar height indicator added to FatBits area.  (Think C 7.0.3)

1.2.2 — Fixed a bug in Import.  (Think C 7.0.3)

1.2.3 — On some systems (especially PowerMacs running 7.5), creating a new pattern made a direct-pixel map instead of the indexed map that the rest of the program expected, and this would somehow eventually corrupt the MBP file's resource map.  Now new patterns are forced to haved indexed pixels.  (Think C 7.0.3)